Wizard: Starting With Synthesized Gems

In the Silent Plane, at the far north, on the train, Wizard Smith demonstrated his magic and subdued his gunfighter.

He led the gunfighter and all the disciples who had performed the ritual to summon him, and quickly departed the train.

They got off the train and made their way forward, evading the watchful eyes of this world's inspectors at every turn.

At last they found one of the congregation's hideouts, an abandoned factory.

Wizard Smith looked at his native disciples with cold, indifferent eyes. "I have come from beyond the heavens, bringing supreme truth. Today I will separately impart to each of you a Star Prayer Incantation. From this day forward, you are to make daily offerings, calling upon my true power from beyond the heavens to descend into this world."

The sixteen-year-old girl priestess looked at him with stars in her eyes, as though gazing at her idol. "Deity, as long as we follow what you say, will we be able to see the truth, overthrow the emperor's tyranny, and restore freedom to this civilization?"

Wizard Smith swept her with a cold glance. "Do as I say. Do not ask what you should not ask."

At this moment, his entire mind was focused on the Grand Magic Modeling Competition. He was wholly intent on driving the other three competitors out of this world, and had no patience whatsoever for the thoughts and feelings of these native inhabitants.

In his eyes, these people were beneath even the wizard laborers in his family's black factories. They were nothing but puppets in this competition, and their opinions were of no importance.

What mattered was efficiency.

He needed to get ahead of the others and refine the framework of his Grand Magic first, accumulate total magic pressure, and then move against the others to drive them out of this plane.

The reason the Silent Chalice Competition was called both the Plane Conquest Competition and the Grand Magic Modeling Competition was that the construction of a Grand Magic was, in itself, the process by which wizards conducted plane conquest, and indeed the original purpose behind it.

Wizard Smith felt certain inhibited thoughts begin to stir. "The Silent Witch Truth's Grand Magic, having been forged four times, has long since been tempered into something solid, transformed from virtual to real. The Silent Chalice Grand Magic possesses the ability to suppress thought and seal away secrets."

"The seal the Silent Chalice placed on the materials for this competition was lifted the very instant we entered the competition."

For the sake of fairness, once all spectators and competitors left the Silent Plane, they would only retain memories relevant to their own Grand Magic.

Everything else, every secret of this plane, would be sealed by the Silent Witch's Grand Magic, the Silent Chalice.

Only during the competition itself would the Silent Chalice refrain from exerting its effects.

Although using a single Grand Magic to seal the secrets of an entire region, and a region within the wizard world at that, was truly extraordinary.

Even if Wizard Smith racked his brain, he could not conceive of how any single person could command such power.

How could one person's magic pressure and one person's spell model accomplish something of this magnitude?

Yet the Silent Witch's Grand Magic simply could.

They were all Grand Magics, but there were differences in how many times each had been forged, and differences in the magical support provided by the caster's true body.

Wizard Smith looked at the disciples. In his eyes these people were not human, they were NPCs, they were production tools.

"Priestess."

The girl priestess, who looked identical to Locke's, looked at Wizard Smith with reverent eyes. "Deity, please impart to me the Star Prayer Incantation. Let me feel the truth of this world, and overthrow the emperor's tyranny."

Wizard Smith said, "I will teach you the Sirius Prayer."

He looked at the gunfighter. "I will teach you the Mars Prayer."

"And you, I will teach you the Arcturus Prayer... and you, the Aries Prayer... there are one hundred and eight prayers in total. Each prayer requires at least ten thousand people, praying continuously day and night. Once the prayer begins, it cannot stop. One must pray for at least three days without eating or drinking. This is what is called the Three-Day Star Prayer."

"Each prayer lasts three days, sustained without interruption, carried out throughout the entirety of your lives."

The main body of his Meteor from Beyond the Heavens Grand Magic had already been constructed. At this moment, the magic had become his second soul and one of his magic sources.

With this in place, a wizard could complete both the internal and external circulation of a dual-circulation system, drawing upon magical tides from the outside world and converting them into personal magical power.

While his own Grand Magic could simultaneously generate its own magical tides, converting them into personal magical power.

This was the world of the Second Circle.

Two realms of existence within and without.

A wondrous state that even the current Wizard Smith still needed to carefully think through and explore.

Because he had only just become a Second Circle wizard. The content he had read in books previously, he now found upon actually experiencing it, had sometimes been understood with subtle inaccuracies.

Because at the time he had only been a First Circle wizard, unable to truly understand the Second Circle world. Forcing comprehension through the content of books had only meant using a pile of First Circle wizard thinking to approximate Second Circle wizard thinking.

Superficially similar, but fundamentally wrong in almost every step.

'My Grand Magic, the Meteor from Beyond the Heavens, has been constructed. But to increase the total magic pressure volume, I need to make use of this world's native inhabitants.'

Wizard Smith thought, 'Human beings possess a special form of spirituality. This spirituality is what distinguishes a human soul from an animal soul, and that is what is called humanity.'

'Humanity holds power. By borrowing these people's human prayers directed toward the star realm, then using my Grand Magic, the Meteor from Beyond the Heavens, as a gravitational force, I can pull comet planes from the star realm toward here. Comet planes falling into this world will alter celestial phenomena, transforming into my Grand Magic's eternally grand meteor shower, forming a natural phenomenon that will increase this world's total magic pressure volume.'

'In this way, my Grand Magic will become increasingly indispensable to this world.'

'What is a Grand Magic? A Grand Magic is a wizard's assets in this world. As long as my assets are large enough, I can use my large assets to squeeze out everyone else's smaller assets and drive them into bankruptcy. And people are the most productive tools of production.'

'These people are the best tools for growing my assets. As long as the assets are large enough, even in this world I can leverage small resources to achieve large outcomes, and turn from guest into host. Just like those high-circle wizards who hold only a small share but can use key control rights to dominate those shop alliances. Effortless, like an antelope hanging its horns.'

Wizard Smith thought, 'So my strategy for this competition is to immediately recruit a group of native inhabitants in this world to perform star-calling prayers for me, continuously strengthening the total asset value of my Grand Magic.'

The girl priestess showed a troubled expression. "Deity, we do not have enough people. One hundred and eight ten-thousands, our congregation cannot even gather a thousand devoted believers."

"No, not even a thousand. We may not even have a hundred devoted believers."

Wizard Smith's requirements seemed easy to meet on the surface, but were in reality extremely difficult. Praying for three days at a stretch, three days without eating or drinking, and then sustaining this throughout one's entire life.

Even the girl priestess doubted that the congregation she had built for the deity could gather even ten believers that devoted.

Wizard Smith was unconcerned. "Help me arrange meetings with this world's great nobles. Then... under the guise of recruiting workers, advertise publicly for factory employees. The job content is simply to have them pray."

The gunfighter was a little taken aback. "Recruiting workers?"

Wizard Smith said coldly, "Yes. Are these not all forms of work? Whether they are true believers is unimportant. All that matters is that they perform the action. As long as there is payment, people become devout. As long as they hold the belief that praying is work and completing the prayer means receiving payment, my Star Prayer Incantations will succeed."

"On the walk here just now, I saw that this society of yours has children as young as three years old cleaning chimneys, and children under ten kept in lightless rooms working for you. My work requirements are nothing compared to that."

The gunfighter looked at Wizard Smith. "My lord... even so, going to see this world's great nobles would be very dangerous. Those great nobles will notify the emperor."

Wizard Smith said, "They will not. I have countless benefits to promise them, longevity, beauty, the fulfillment of their deepest desires."

"Very well. Priestess, find a way to connect me with the great nobles and major industrialists of this city. These people are all my potential allies."

Wizard Smith said, "As quickly as possible."

He was not certain of the progress the other competitors had made.

...

In the Silent Chalice spectator arena, the many wizards watching Wizard Smith's clean and decisive actions nodded with admiration.

Entering a world, seeking out potential allies of shared interest within it, and then quickly hiring people to begin constructing one's Grand Magic.

This was the standard procedure for a wizard colonizing a world.

Of course, colonization methods varied enormously. Some methods could not even be called colonization by any reasonable definition. It was simply that historical inertia had caused them all to be grouped under the same term.

But Wizard Smith had indeed used a very ancient yet classic approach.

Cooperating with the world's great nobles. These nobles and major industrialists were the most likely to collaborate with an outside wizard in exchange for some form of benefit.

The seven sun ring wizards exchanged hushed comments.

"The Meteor from Beyond the Heavens requires star-prayer devotees to help the wizard summon comet planes from the star realm. Once the comet planes are summoned, they benefit the world, and the comet plane cluster that forms becomes a reservoir for the total magic pressure of the Meteor from Beyond the Heavens."

"How to find more star-prayer devotees and which comet planes to summon, these are all matters of great significance. So the Meteor from Beyond the Heavens has a high degree of variability. Once all one hundred and eight comet planes have been pulled over, the variety of comet planes they are composed of will determine the final characteristics of this Grand Magic."

"But regardless, in the end there will be one hundred and eight comet planes forming a meteor shower that perpetually moves through the sky of that world. The cluster of one hundred and eight meteors then serves as his source of magic. Of course, one hundred and eight is the minimum. This number can actually be increased further."

"But before that, his Meteor from Beyond the Heavens is nothing but an empty framework, and will naturally not add much to his magic pressure."

The seven sun ring wizards discussed further. "Being able to draw comet planes from the star realm, comet planes imbued with some specific type of stellar planar force, through so common a resource as humanity, is the greatest strength of this magic."

"The second greatest strength is that the types of stellar planes contained within the summoned comet planes can determine the characteristics of this Grand Magic. This turns the Grand Magic into a composite magic that can be adjusted over time, at a certain cost, to obtain whatever characteristics one desires."

"Furthermore, this magic can command subordinate species. Those subordinate species are bound to the comet planes and are part of the comet force. Likewise, the native inhabitants of that world can also be captured by the Meteor from Beyond the Heavens force and converted into subordinate species."

Although for a wizard, these subordinate species held little significance beyond serving as part of the total magic pressure reservoir.

In this particular competition focused on Grand Magic construction, however, this point was actually quite meaningful.

Because in this competition, wizards could not use any magic against one another other than their Grand Magics.

That left only two options.

The first was to use one's Grand Magic directly against others.

A Grand Magic was both a source of magic and a spell in its own right, inherently the most powerful magic a Second Circle wizard possessed.

But this method was too risky. It was a head-on clash, a fight to the finish with no room for maneuvering. Either you won or you lost.

And it was very easy to misread the timing and fall into someone else's scheme.

It was like going all-in.

The second option was to use one's Grand Magic to empower one's subordinate species, sending them to disrupt the foundations of another wizard's Grand Magic, thereby dismantling the other's Grand Magic and reducing their total asset value.

After all, a Grand Magic was an accumulation pool of total magic pressure, a source of magic. Colliding the entirety of one system against the entirety of another was too dangerous and too intense, too easily resulting in total ruin. It was better to first let the participants within each Grand Magic system compete against each other.

That way, even a temporary defeat would not spell total ruin.

Of course, just as vassal races were the exclusive feature of bloodline school wizards' Grand Magics, subordinate species were the exclusive feature of meteorology school wizards' Grand Magics.

Other Grand Magics did not necessarily have vassal races or subordinate species, but they would certainly have other lower-level individuals.

Because the essence of a Grand Magic was using a single spell to establish in a world some form of energy circulation, which could be of any type, and thereby become a source of magic.

So within this energy circulation, there would inevitably be many individual participants. Otherwise, it could not be called an energy circulation.

In essence, because of the Grand Magic, wizards transformed from individuals into phenomena. And so a Grand Magic could never be small in scale, nor could it consist only of a single individual.

Therefore, all Grand Magics could certainly be divided into many individual components.

This was especially true of a newly established Grand Magic.

In essence, this also indicated that a very high degree of separation existed between a wizard and their own magic source.

It was even possible, at this stage, to use special means to eliminate the wizard while leaving the Grand Magic to transform into some universally accessible magic source that anyone could draw upon.

So these individual components were what the various Grand Magics could pit against one another.

One reviewer said, "Let's see the strategies of the other competitors."

At this point, the Silent Throne displayed images of the other competitors. The spectators immediately turned their attention to them, drinking in these competitors' Grand Magic modeling experience with eager intensity.

In the Silent Plane, on the train, Witch Georgina raised her right hand and said to the girl, "There is no need to call me a goddess or elder sister deity. I am not a deity. I am a person."

"You may call me elder sister."

The girl priestess was momentarily taken aback, wearing a thoughtful expression. "But a deity is a deity."

The disciples behind her had the sense that their faith was on the verge of crumbling.

Witch Georgina's manner, however, actually earned her the goodwill of the gunfighter, who put away his guns and said in a low voice, "Lady Georgina, that is the name you gave me. So you are someone from another world, with great power?"

"Then, what can you bring to our world? Why should I follow you?"

Witch Georgina looked at him seriously and said, "Fairness. I can bring your world fairness, warmth, and wealth. Everything that ordinary people want."

A loom appeared behind her, working away. Because a holy avatar could not carry an astral ring, she could only use her own magic pressure as weaving raw material. Using the spell model of the Fate Loom she had constructed, she began weaving magical garments.

Before long, one hundred magical garments were complete.

Because Witch Georgina had converted magic pressure to weave the garments, her magic pressure dropped from 12000 to 11990.

Witch Georgina handed out the gossamer-thin magical garments that had appeared in the carriage to the congregation members and the gunfighter. "Put these on. These clothes will protect you."

"Those who wear them will be as though clad in weightless armor, able to resist attacks, with increased physical resilience and improved bodily functions."

"I have modified the style of these garments to match the fashion of clothing in your world."

Witch Georgina said, "I am now renaming the congregation the Georgina Charitable Society. From this day forward, our Georgina Charitable Society will distribute these magical garments widely, giving them to the poor who cannot afford to clothe or house themselves. With these garments, they will no longer fear the cold, no longer fear the blizzards and rainy days that can kill..."

"This is the conscience of us magical weavers."

The gunfighter was thoroughly baffled. The deity summoned by the saintess had barely arrived before declaring herself a person rather than a deity, and was now distributing clothing to everyone.

What was going on?

The girl priestess leapt up with delight. "Wonderful. Thank you, elder sister..."

"Elder sister, will you help us see the truth and overthrow the emperor's tyranny?"

Witch Georgina hesitated for a moment, then decided to tell the truth, since she was not a person who liked to deceive people. "My most important objective right now is not that. It is to get more magical garments into the hands of the poor by distributing them for free, and to have them join my charitable society."

"Making these native inhabitants live better lives, is that not better than seeking the truth?"

The girl priestess seemed not to have heard this, and said joyfully, "Elder sister, you have finally come. I have talked with you in dreams for six years, and I admire you so much. You were the one who told me that the emperor is not actually a great benefactor, just a paper tiger."

Below the Silent Throne, the spectators and reviewers in the stands all wore expressions of bewilderment.

Because Witch Georgina had done something that looked completely baffling to everyone, which was to consume her own magic to make magical garments and then give them away to the native inhabitants of that world. Not only had she not sought to win over the world's power class, those great nobles and major industrialists, she was going to try to win over the common people of that world?

The efficiency of this was simply too low.

Although certain wizards did sometimes do business with the lower classes of a colonized world first, creating a deep dependence on wizard civilization from the grassroots level upward.

But that was a form of commercial colonization.

This was the Silent Chalice Competition. There was no time to use such a gentle and gradual approach to slowly build up a Grand Magic and increase its total magic pressure.

And on top of that, Witch Georgina was not even engaging in commercial exchange. She was actually sacrificing her own magic pressure to make magical garments for the native inhabitants of that world.

The panel of seven sun ring wizards was thoroughly confused.

Because the Silent Chalice Competition was not famous simply because it was a well-known competition. It was famous because the competition quality was extremely high, and many wizards could learn from it. That was why it could attract commercial sponsorship.

In the highly commercialized market of the Cloud Marsh Wetlands, if a competition had no commercial value, no matter how many important figures endorsed it, it was a losing business venture.

So the Grand Magic modeling quality of the competitors needed to be as high as possible.

Competitors in a competition like this naturally would not produce poor Grand Magic modeling. It was something worthy of everyone's reference and study, setting a standard of excellence.

But the Grand Magic that Witch Georgina had now produced, one with no previous records, was proving somewhat difficult to make sense of.

One sun ring wizard thought, "There is still something to appreciate in it, if one looks for it. The ability to convert magic pressure resources into a special weaving material thread actually requires a very deep foundation in textile studies."

"And look at the speed at which she weaves those magical garments. It is extraordinarily fast. That speaks to how exceptionally solid her foundational knowledge in textile studies is. No wonder Bonifacius University chose her to compete."

Another sun ring wizard reviewer's mouth twitched. "Let's continue watching. We cannot quite make sense of it yet."

"Surely she cannot genuinely be sacrificing her own magic pressure to shine and give warmth to the common people of a colonized world. That would truly be too funny. And going to win over the common people? It is not that it cannot be done. But that is a strategy that takes a long time to produce results. In such an intense competition, being even one step slower could get you knocked out of that plane. She is not winning over the great nobles. She is over there setting up a charitable organization..."

A third sun ring wizard reviewer said, "Look at the Bonifacius University spectator section. Those Second and Third Circle wizards are still completely composed. That means this was within their expectations."

"The magical weavers probably want to showcase the characteristics of textile studies, which is why they produced such a controversial Grand Magic."

"Let's keep watching. There should be a follow-up move."

A sun ring magical weaver from the Bonifacius University side heard the buzzing debate of the wizards around him and curled the corner of his mouth. "This is the answer sheet our magical weavers have specially prepared for this competition!"

At the same time, in the Silent Plane, Locke and Wizard Edgar were also beginning their own moves.